B2B marketers are under pressure to achieve ever greater reach and results with their demand generation programmes, but are faced with static or shrinking budgets. That means working smarter and leaner, which has driven the automation of many marketing processes such as segmentation and campaign management. Find out more in our whitepaper.

1. marketmakers
white paper
Marketing
Automation:
why high-tech
still needs
high-touch to
succeed
marketmakers
www.marketmakers.co.uk
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2. white paper
Faced with static or shrinking
To stand out from all of the white noise and really
budgets, B2B marketers are under
resonate with their target audience, marketers must
pressure to achieve ever greater
reach and results with their demand
ensure their campaign and assets are truly relevant
to a prospect’s needs and stage of his journey.
generation programmes. That
Saying the right thing, in the right way, to the
means working smarter and leaner,
right person, at the right time is key to maximising
which has driven the automation
conversions.
of many marketing processes such
With the need for such laser-like precision, it’s no
as segmentation and campaign
wonder that marketing automation has found
management.
favour among the B2B community for delivering
With the right planning and execution, an
automated campaign can actively enhance
the customer journey by delivering timely and
relevant content. But taken to its extreme, an
unqualified suspect could feasibly be morphed into
a qualified prospect without ever having spoken to
a live human being. So how can marketing, and
the wider commercial organisation, ensure that
efficiency of contact isn’t achieved at the expense
of a meaningful and lasting relationship with their
prospects?
highly personalised, content-based demand
generation strategies. Not only does it give
marketers greater control over prospects along
the pipeline, but it also offers unparalleled visibility
into each prospect interaction. This intelligence
can drive the prospect journey, and by being able
to correlate revenue to specific lead generation
activities can help confirm which tools and tactics
are working better than others.
The automated distribution of content, triggered
by a prospect’s behaviour (or “digital body
language”), is particularly apt when targeting
Automated for the people
decision-makers who want to be advised on a
According to marketing guru Dr Jeffrey Lant’s “Rule
to”.
potential purchase and are resistant to being “sold
of Seven”, it takes on average seven contacts from
a seller until the buyer feels comfortable enough
to do business. This means time-pressed business
people are inundated with messaging from wouldbe vendors.
Content might include downloadable assets,
such as white papers or case studies; videos and
podcasts; email and the web, including dedicated
micro-sites; and registration to real-world or virtual
events, such as webinars. Offering content that
is educational, rather than salesy, helps position a
vendor as a credible and trusted source of industry
expertise and insight.
marketmakers
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3. white paper
Automation can help to increase conversion
you, it doesn’t give a foolproof indication of how
rates by ensuring that early-stage prospects are
interesting you are to your prospect!
properly nurtured, stemming the funnel leakage
that competitors will be only too pleased to mop
Perhaps its ability to facilitate the entire customer
up. Its strength also lies in accelerating progress
journey is also automation’s Achilles heel. For
from enquiry to sales-accepted lead, effectively
example, you send out an email with a link to the
shortening the sales cycle.
prospect and he visits your website. Based on his
perceived interest, you then send him an invitation
Bringing process discipline and measurability to
to an event, to which he doesn’t respond, but he
marketing, automation responds to the universal
does subsequently download the webinar. You
need to demonstrate return on investment. The
follow up by sending him a white paper… and so
result is increased predictability of activities,
it goes on. A multitude of touches, but none of
enabling marketers to explicitly prove their worth in
them human. What’s needed is some real-world
generating qualified sales opportunities. This may
interaction and the integration of telemarketing
go some way to resolving the disconnect between
offers an effective solution.
sales and marketing that is still conspicuous in far too
many organisations.
Telemarketing makes it personal
As with every new marketing phenomenon,
Telemarketing is a well-established practice, and
automation is not a magic bullet. If relied upon in
while the basic tools haven’t substantially changed
isolation, it has a number of limitations. It operates
throughout the years, the techniques have been
on logic – a system of rules it uses to determine
considerably refined over time. As a versatile, two-
what communication is sent to the prospect next
way medium, telemarketing isn’t just a vehicle to
– but it can’t always gauge where a buyer is in the
deliver a message but equally an opportunity to ask
decision-making process.
questions and, crucially, increase understanding
that will deepen the relationship.
Automation may be reactive (triggered by a
request for information) or speculative (inferring
Telemarketing builds on the strengths of automation
that prospects with similar profiles will have similar
in that it uses a structured, efficient and easily
interests) but it isn’t anticipatory. A content-
repeatable model. But its other key strength lies
based strategy relies heavily on the quality and
in humanisation: it enables a richer, more natural
relevance of the campaign’s assets, which may
exchange between two people, second only
grow stale over time, and sometimes prospects
to a face-to-face meeting. And because the
don’t necessarily want more information but
interaction is in real time, there is less chance of
more understanding. And while automation can
the misunderstandings that can occur with latent
help you decide how interesting a prospect is to
communications.
marketmakers
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4. white paper
While a website or piece of direct mail delivers a
Perhaps one of the most important roles
consistent representation of your brand or offer
telemarketing can play is in creating greater
to every reader, it can’t adapt its tone based on
alignment between sales and marketing, who
the recipient’s frame of mind. An experienced
often relate to one another as adversaries rather
telemarketing agent, on the other hand, can gauge
than allies. Sales frequently accuse marketing
the mood of the prospect at the other end of the
of generating insufficient quantity and quality of
line and ask searching questions to determine their
leads, while marketing counter-claim that a large
needs and how the offering might fit.
proportion of leads are not followed up promptly or
enthusiastically enough – or at all.
An agent can maximise a call by offering to post a
case study, email a white paper or direct a prospect
The cost to attract, hire, train, motivate and retain
to the relevant page of a website.
a sales force is staggering. The remit of sales is to
convert high value prospects into customers. But a
In this way, he creates additional value beyond the
typical sales professional is only actively engaged
basic fulfilment that could be achieved through
in the actual business of selling for around 25-35% of
automation and self-service. His willingness to help
the time, with much of the balance spent on lead
creates rapport and cements the relationship with
generation or qualification.
the prospect. The telemarketing agent becomes an
ambassador for your brand.
Often, this is because lead scoring can mean a
prospect is passed to sales without a crucial piece
While valuable to the prospect, a content-based
of qualification. He may have taken a number of
strategy always carries the risk of missing the mark,
required actions, e.g. email click-through, white
especially when you only get one shot at the
paper download, webinar attendance, but his
creative. However, the addition of telemarketing
“interest” doesn’t translate into intent. His project
can bolster the effectiveness of any campaign and
may actually be two years from fruition, or he may
reduce uncertainty in future creative executions.
be an influencer but not a decision-maker. A
telemarketing call could swiftly establish the missing
Want to know whether your last direct mailer or
element of budget, authority, need or timeline.
case study went down well with its readers? Still
guessing whether a prospect is coming to an
Many organisations still harbour common
upcoming event? Just ask. Telemarketing is an ideal
misperceptions about telemarketing, believing
way of gaining feedback and can enable running
in-depth inside knowledge of the business is vital
repairs to be made to an online campaign that isn’t
to maintaining credibility with a prospect on the
delivering the goods, to rapidly reverse its fortunes.
phone. However, a good telemarketer is an
expert at communication and not the specific
field or product that he or she is promoting.
marketmakers
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5. white paper
To engage a prospect, you need to be smart,
Successful relationship-building is founded on
listen, ask appropriate questions and steer the
age-old common sense principles. High tech is
conversation – but those abilities aren’t exclusive
nothing without high touch, and the addition of
to an experienced, technically competent sales
telemarketing has been repeatedly proven to
executive.
increase the potency of other automatically served
forms of messaging, evidenced by the volume
It’s possible to simultaneously identify, qualify and
and quality of leads that are produced. And if
quantify a sales lead in a single targeted call,
“telemarketing” still has outmoded and misplaced
freeing up your expensive sales force to focus on
connotations of cold calling and hard selling,
the directly incentivised task of closing deals.
perhaps a brand refresh as “telenurturing” is long
overdue…?
The last word in the marketing
conversation?
The art of marketing – defining and positioning the
offer and executing the creative – will always rely
on human input. Automation, however, brings
a scientific approach that enables marketers
to streamline the targeting, timing and content
of activity to respond to prospects’ actions and
requirements.
Marketing automation enables innovative and
incredibly efficient ways of increasing the frequency
and relevance of contact, but marketers run the risk
of devaluing both their content and their prospect
For more information
on intelligence led
telemarketing, please
contact Market Makers
interactions by relying exclusively on a self-service
model.
While cutting-edge marketing applications are
enabling unprecedented levels of personalisation, a
phone call is inherently personal. With the surge of
Tel: 0845 468 0880
interest in social media, industry gurus are predicting
Website: www.marketmakers.co.uk
the end of marketing rhetoric in favour of real
Email: marketing@marketmakers.co.uk
conversation with prospects. Telemarketing is, in
essence, part of that conversation.
marketmakers
www.marketmakers.co.uk
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About marketmakers
As a Multi award winning telemarketing agency,
Market Makers build industry-leading, bespoke
campaigns for appointment, sales and lead
generation requirements. With a fully resultsorientated approach,
Market Makers guarantee the highest quality, most
targeted business opportunities, to support the long
term strategic growth of our clients.
As an agency built with direct marketers at the
heart, we believe that telemarketing is not a job
that simply starts and finishes with someone talking
on the phone.
High return telemarketing involves market analysis
and target profiling, expert data sourcing,
results-focused analysis and reporting and, most
importantly, continual assessment and enhancing.
marketmakers
www.marketmakers.co.uk